Question

I’m using Apache POI 3.6, I want to read an excel file which has a date like this 8/23/1991.

 switch (cell.getCellType()) {

   ...
   ...

   case HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC:
     value = "NUMERIC value=" + cell.getNumericCellValue();
     break;

   ...

 }

But it takes the numeric value type and returns the value like this 33473.0.

I’ve tried to use Numeric Cell Type although with no luck.

dbltemp=row.getCell(c, Row.CREATE_NULL_AS_BLANK).getNumericCellValue();

if (c == 6 || c == 9) {
    strTemp= new String(dbltemp.toString().trim());

    long tempDate = Long.parseLong(strTemp);
    Date date = new Date(tempDate);

    strVal = date.toString();
}

How can I fix my problem?

Answer 1

NOTE: HSSFDateUtil is deprecated

If you know which cell i.e. column position say 0 in each row is going to be a date, you can go for
row.getCell(0).getDateCellValue() directly.
http://poi.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/poi/hssf/usermodel/HSSFCell.html#getDateCellValue()

UPDATE: Here is an example – you can apply this in your switch case code above. I am checking and printing the Numeric as well as Date value. In this case the first column in my sheet has dates, hence I use row.getCell(0).

You can use the if (HSSFDateUtil.isCellDateFormatted .. code block directly in your switch case.

if (row.getCell(0).getCellType() == HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC)
    System.out.println ("Row No.: " + row.getRowNum ()+ " " +
        row.getCell(0).getNumericCellValue());

    if (HSSFDateUtil.isCellDateFormatted(row.getCell(0))) {
        System.out.println ("Row No.: " + row.getRowNum ()+ " " + 
            row.getCell(0).getDateCellValue());
    }
}

The output is

Row No.: 0 39281.0
Row No.: 0 Wed Jul 18 00:00:00 IST 2007
Row No.: 1 39491.0
Row No.: 1 Wed Feb 13 00:00:00 IST 2008
Row No.: 2 39311.0
Row No.: 2 Fri Aug 17 00:00:00 IST 2007